Gratitude for My Body...

I am healthy, at least as far as I know.  And if I am not and there is some terrible illness writhing beneath my skin, I guess I will come to know that when it is time.

Aging brings with it an understanding that you are no longer in control of what comes next, if you ever were.  Good health is not something to be taken for granted, ever.  Ask the child in the ICU fighting for her life, ask the young mother who has just received the devastating cancer diagnosis, ask anyone who has ever had a significant health crisis and they will tell you every second matters.

And aging has a way of helping you see this with a revelatory clarity.  I know I shall not have good health forever.  I know that I cannot avoid old age, sickness and death.  I cannot avoid it, because no one can.  It comes for all of us.  Sometimes dramatically and with a great deal of fanfare.  Others’ demise is more gradual, a kind of illness transparency if you will, that takes a little more of the person each day, until, finally, they are just no longer here.

None of us get to choose.  Unless we decide to end our own life.  And that is a polarizing notion, yet, something that is and will remain within our control.  Always.  We might have control over nothing else in this world, except this.  However, it is usually reserve for those in immense pain, fatally afflicted and emotionally unwell.  The rest of us have to grapple with whatever comes for us on the health front, and live with it.

I have had a hard time living in my body.  A not so quiet war rages within.  I have learned to soften its roar, I have learned to manage its dysfunction.  I have grown in my capacity to live within my own skin.  But I would be an epically huge liar if I did not own that I am still am at war with my mortal host.  We have ceasefires, but the conflict continues.

I have a very hard time being present in my body.  I know if I am too hot or too cold, uncomfortable, itchy, etc.  But where things land within my body is a harder question for me.  My lifetime spent searching every way possible to avoid being within myself.  My body always a prison I seek to escape.  Even though, as far as bodies go, I have been fortunate in my luck in this area.

No matter how much I weigh, or how little, I am never completely happy.  Always wishing for something different, and yet, mindful of my body’s continued presence and gifts in this life.  I should be nicer to it.  Feed it better fuel, allow it more rest and recuperation.  I do a pretty good job of working it, but without the balance of good nutrition and rest, it leaves it unbalanced and vulnerable to illness and decay.

I know the origin of this war.  I know exactly where it comes from and why I sought to leave it.  It was here on the landscape of my being that pain was learned and then the emotional pain emanated from there.  I learned early and young, that severing the mind/body connection was vital and life saving.  And in so learning created an unintentional life long struggle to reconnect that which I severed early on.

I am not sure I will ever be well with regards to my physical existence.  But I know I work on it daily.  I struggle to maintain myself and like everything else in this life, some days I kill it and other days not so much.  I work at it.  I really do.

In this moment, I do not hurt, and I know of no immediate threat to my wellbeing, other than me.  I am grateful for this and humbled.  My thoughts and behaviors act to humble me to how very blessed I have been, while behaving like a jackass and taking so very many things for granted.

So today, I am grateful for my mortal host.  I am grateful for the skin I am in, sagging and falling though it is.  I am of the nature to grow old and die.  This is my most basic task as a human.  And it is unavoidable.  

Today I will work to be present and grateful instead of critical of my body and all its amazing functionality.  I am here, living proof that a lifetime of self abuse, sometimes works out pretty well, that there can be recovery and, perhaps, even a quiet joy with the gifts of physical presence in this life.  Even while maintaining a complete lack of appreciation far too often.

I am grateful for my weight, my skin, my eyes, my ears, my vital organs, my ability to ambulate wherever I so may choose.  I am grateful for my lungs that take in air with ease and comfort.  I am grateful for my beating heart.  I am grateful for my mind which functions pretty damn well most of the time.  I am grateful for this body and host for this most amazing life.  And today I will do my best to just love and accept it for what it is and be thankful for all its most amazing gifts I take for granted pretty much every single day.  Today I will endeavor to appreciate the absolute blessing that is my body.  And will endeavor to carry that forward...

Again, still...

I am grateful for 

Safe arrivals in Big Sur

Roaring fires

Beautiful cozy river houses

Time with my family

Laughter

Kindness

Sunsets in Carmel

Seeing my daughter in love and happy

My mom

The ability to get my mom away for a few days

Candles

Warm glow of firelight